Monday, July 27, 2009

I'm so thrilled to be participating in my very first Daring Bakers challenge! I've been reading along with this blogging group for what seems like years now, and finally got up the courage to join in on their monthly baking adventures. I've been cooking with the counterpart group, the Daring Cooks, for a few months now and have loved the sense of community that's fostered by creating the same recipe along with hundreds of other food bloggers.

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network. Check out Nicole's blog for the recipes.

We were given the option to make either cookie or both, and I chose to make the mallows. By some miracle, everything fell into place perfectly. There were certainly times when I needed to use my underdeveloped baking gut (such as how long to whip the marshmallows until they were done), but I must've made the right choices, since it almost all worked out! I made these several weeks ago and am still in awe of the fact that I successfully made marshmallow from scratch.

My only real sticking point (no pun intended) was that the chocolate never completely dried, even after 3 days. It may have had something to do with tempering or blooming or something else I didn't pay attention to. Oops. I'm okay with that though, because they were finger lickin' good. I still consider this a win.

I can't even say how thrilling it is to have a successful DB challenge under my belt. I'm already on the edge of my seat looking forward to the next one!